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Getting a haircut in a foreign country is like going to the dentist anywhere in the world; it sucks. Yet, I’d live in a dentist’s office before resorting to a man-bun, so I do what I have to do. I can tell that they can tell I am American before I open my mouth.

“Wash?”

I nod. They lead me over to the sinks. They place a large black plastic robe around me and sit me down. As always, there is no position that is pleasant for my neck and my head is so far back that I can’t comfortably breathe. They wash it twice, three times.

I sit in front of the mirror, wet. I sigh.

“Style?” The woman asks. Embarrassed, as always, I find the screen shot on my phone of some much better looking man with much better hair than me and show it to her. She looks at it, then to my hair, then back. She frowns.

“Your hair, not like this.”

I shrug, taking my phone back. “Something like this then,” I tell her. She starts cutting, I close my eyes. Then, the worst part of a haircut arrives; talk.

“Where are you from?” she asks.

I open my eyes.

“America,” I say to her reflection.

She makes a face. “Why do you come to Russia?”

I try to blow off a piece of hair that’s fallen on my lip. It’s wet.

“I like it here,” I tell her.

She makes another face. I close my eyes, again. Only a moment.

“My friend go to America before. She went and came home with girlfriend.”

I wait for more, it comes.

“It is so strange, people in America do this a lot?”

“Do what?”

“Girls making girlfriends.”

I can’t nod so I tell her, “yes, it is quite common.”

She makes a disapproving tsk. “She had a boyfriend when she left Russia, but came back with a girlfriend. She wants to marry her.”

“You realize if I were an alien, I would think this was the capitol of Earth.”

My brother nods. “Maybe this place was made by aliens and that is the capitol of Earth according to the rest of the universe.”

I can’t help but feel like that makes more sense than any other explanation I can come up with. So, I agree. Inside is motion–pure motion. People move, lights move, the air moves. It is 2 a.m. We carry our bags through a crowd of open containers, lit cigarettes, and bachelorettes. Our mother calls it “The Floor.”

It is endless, yet, it ends. The elevator goes up at a slant. A woman in a sequined blue dress stumbles into an elderly Hispanic woman holding a sleeping child.

“This is some wonky shit,” the sequined woman blurts out.

“I wonder what’s going on at the bottom of the Grand Canyon right now,” I whisper to my brother.

“Hi.”
“Hi”
“What did he say when you came home?”
“Go Cowboys…you left a mark”
“Is it big?”
“No.”
“Did he notice?”
“No.”
“Did she–”
“She called five times in the middle of the night.”
“Oh.”
“Why did we?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“I know”
“I have to go.”
“Why?”
“I have to. I said I was getting coffee.”
“Okay…”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”

We headed to Memphis
A city known for blues music
and segregation
(segregation is a thing
like when you’re a kid
and you try to keep your peas
out of your mashed potatoes
except you have an irrational fear of peas
and you’re a potato)
we had dinner at a place
that didn’t have any peas
they had shrimp though
and it was good–
blackened
We asked the waitress
for a place to see some blues
she told us about a place
in that part of town
(that is a thing that no one talks about
it is similar to them or those)
“Take a taxi”
she told us
“I always take a taxi
when I go out
in that part of town”
We thanked her
and ate shrimp

it is dark. A man in a gray suit stands in the door of the bistro. He is talking to a girl in a black leather jacket. It must be cold outside. It certainly looks wet

a man walks by on his phone. He is wearing a suit coat. White shirt underneath, loose collar no tie. come to think of it, yes, the guy in the bistro. He has the same shirt. The collar is a bit wider.

The man in the black suit coat has stopped, texting. He turns around and walks back, into the bistro, past the man with the matching shirt. All this, as a couple, both wearing gray, walk by.

The man in the gray jacket, white shirt. He comes out. He has a guitar on his back, I think. It is in a gray case.

Two older men walk by. I think. One of them may be a woman. His pants are tight. He is wearing flip flops. But that tells you very little these days. He has a puffy black jacket (it must be cold) and I can’t see his face. It could be a woman. But his hair is short. But that tells you very little these days.

It is quiet.

It is empty.

A car. Gray. Not speeding.

A man walks out of the mart. Younger. Tan. Tanned by ancestry, not the sun. It looks like he bought a drink. Non-alcoholic, maybe. He texts between a white and gray car. He gets in the gray car. Drives off. It must not have been alcoholic, surely.

Two men and a woman walk by. Man, they are moving. Not running, moving. They, too, are all wearing gray, odd. They pass a man with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He is wearing black.

Two men and a woman again. Different ones this time. Both men wear black hoodies, up. Maybe it is raining. They aren’t moving so fast.

A man walks, stops, paces. Smoking. Between the mart and bistro. He has glasses. He is not wearing gray. Oh, shit, wait. He turns. Down the front of his jacket. A fat gray stripe. It is an ugly jacket. He is an ugly man. Maybe, it is dark. He is wearing glasses. A woman passes by him in a long black coat. She looks to be floating, not aiming anywhere. He watches her approach. As she passes, he looks away briefly only to return, smirking, watching her backside as she makes her way further down the street, out of sight. A car drives by, lights on.

I fell in love with a girl named Alice
We loved each other
As one bulimic cannibal
Might love another
(Bulimics are like mailmen
but with food
Cannibals are like mailmen
Who eat other mailmen)
We did all the things
You can only do
When you’re in love
Like read each other poems
And dance in the middle of the street
To no music

Then
When the music stopped
We’d tear holes in each other
With everything
But bullets

Our conversations
Were a cacophony
Of passionate poetic lines
Like “I love her with
A red hot madness”
Or “He fell heavy on my chest
And whispered me the world”
We salted each other
With enough Bukowski-isms
To drown a class
Of teenage girls
In one biblical flood
Of angst filled love

Yet this great tower
Of poetic babel
Was brought down
In a single verse

“Why aren’t you hard?”

A question that
If turned into a weapon
Could slaughter the known universe.
Then came the storm
“Am I not hot enough for you?”
“Don’t you want to fuck me?”
“Get off me, I am going to sleep.”
Then in the morning
Like a paraplegic
Preparing for a walk
I held her close
And kissed her neck
She reached down
And grabbed my penis and balls
All at once
And mashed them together
She laughed
“That’s what I thought”

After a week
She showed me an article
On her phone
It said
“Food for harder erections”
It had a picture of a banana
(A thing that looks like a penis
but you eat it, unless you’re a cannibal
then you eat both)
Half peeled
And said
“A hard man needs a healthy heart.”